By Filipe Alves
LISBON, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Google Inc must extend
its offer made last week to pay French publishers for use of
their content to all media companies across Europe, the head of
the European Publishers Council said on Thursday.
Last week, the internet search giant agreed to pay 60
million euros ($80 million) into a special fund to help French
media develop their presence on the Internet. It will not pay
them for posting links to their content.
French publishers had demanded licensing fees for headlines
and snippets of articles in its search engine results.
Google settled a similar case with Belgian publishers in
December by helping them boost online revenue, but still faces a
dispute with publishers in Germany.
"Search engines get more than 90 percent of revenues from
online advertising and a substantial part of these come directly
or indirectly from the free access to professional news or
entertainment content produced by the media," Francisco Pinto
Balsemao told Reuters.
"The situation is very bad for media groups (in Europe).
This use is carried out without the authorisation from copyright
holders or without any payment in return. So, all aggregators,
like Google, should pay.
"Google's openness to negotiate and talk looks like a good
step that must now be followed in other (European) countries."
The EPC represents 26 of the main media groups operating in
Europe, including Thomson Reuters, Prisa, News
International, Axel Springer and Impresa
.
Advertising revenues in Portugal fell by 90 million euros
last year to 526 million euros, its lowest since 1997.
Balsemao is also Chief Executive Officer of Portuguese media
group Impresa, which owns Portugal's best-selling weekly
Expresso and television channel SIC.
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